innovation DAILY

Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis. These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.

Problem shared is a problem solved. That’s the theory behind crowdsourcing — people coming together to respond to demand for just about anything, from financial services and labor to information sharing and materials. A subset of that, crowdfunding — any finance that’s been aggregated online — is an exploding online marketplace that rang up a whopping $5 billion in transactions last year.

There’s just one problem: Opportunities in this “crowd economy” are growing at such a fast clip in number and variety that data analysis has lagged, leaving investors and industry wading into uncharted territory. As crowdfunding expands — revenue could hit $100 billion by 2018 if the annual doubling continues — the need to make sense of the trend grows along with it.

Well-crafted strategies are road maps to places that yield competitive advantage and generate value for the firm. But once you’ve arrived, they don’t take you anyplace else. That’s a problem for companies under continual pressure from investors to find new sources of competitive advantage.

I recently had lunch with the CEO of a large privately held corporation that illustrated this dilemma. After two decades of strong growth, he recognized that that his strategy had run its course. In the minds of his investors, his success was baked into his company’s current value and they wanted to know where he was going to find more.

Deep Knowledge Ventures, a firm that focuses on age-related disease drugs and regenerative medicine projects, says the program, called VITAL, can make investment recommendations about life sciences firms by poring over large amounts of data.

In 2011, researchers at the MIT Media Lab debuted Place Pulse, a website that served as a kind of "hot or not" for cities. Given two Google Street View images culled from a select few cities including New York City and Boston, the site asked users to click on the one that seemed safer, more affluent, or more unique. The result was an empirical way to measure urban aesthetics.

Now, that data is being used to predict what parts of cities feel the safest. StreetScore, a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab's Macro Connections and Camera Culture groups, uses an algorithm to create a super high-resolution map of urban perceptions. The algorithmically generated data could one day be used to research the connection between urban perception and crime, as well as informing urban design decisions.

The question keeps educators up at night: Do free, massive open online courses cannibalize enrollment at traditional schools? The results are finally in, part of a new study co-authored by Wharton professor Ezekiel J. Emanuel. Rather than poaching traditional students, MOOCs reach new audiences that business schools, at least, want to target.

In this [email protected] interview, Emanuel notes that “it doesn’t seem that MOOCs are undermining traditional business schools, but may be complementing them, enriching them and providing a great opportunity to [engage] other diverse student bodies.”

Iceland’s genetic homogeneity has given scientists a wealth of information about human DNA as it is passed down through generations. Then there’s India, which “is like a thousand Icelands,” says Dmitri Mehlhorn, an investor in Bangalore-based Medgenome Labs. Medgenome has just raised $4 million to bring DNA sequencing and big-data analysis to India, Tim Hay reports for VentureWire. The deal follows other recent investments involving startups that collect, analyze or present genetic information about disease. Two weeks ago, Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel joined other investors to provide a $2 million funding round to SolveBio, which is attempting to build a vast database of DNA variants that researchers can use as a tool in diagnosing and treating disease. About three weeks ago, Google Ventures provided the bulk of a $130 million funding round for Flatiron Health, which is building a DNA database and outfitting it to work with electronic medical records.

The outlook in China for private equity (PE) investors to earn acceptable returns remains uncertain following the recent reopening of the initial public offering (IPO) market after a 15-month freeze. Wharton experts predict tough days ahead for PE investors in the country as price wars for attractive investment opportunities threaten to erode the outsized returns PE firms typically seek.

Initial reports, nevertheless, look favorable. The 48 IPOs listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges in the first quarter posted record returns, averaging 54% above listing price compared to 9% for the rest of the world, according to a recent Bloomberg report.

Immigration reform is a hot-button topic, one that’s complicated, far-reaching, and divisive. Unfortunately, the conversation about immigration often gets rendered down to a simplistic "us and them" continuum. But pulling back focus on the topic reminds us that almost all Americans are descended from immigrants; that in its early days, the country was built by the dreams and hard work of people who came from somewhere else.

ERIC KING, 30, of Northern Liberties, is founder and CEO of Grand Round Table, a startup on 3rd Street near Market that develops software to help doctors make complicated diagnoses. GRT, which launched in 2012, is getting the correct diagnoses about 70 percent of the time. The company, which was part of the first DreamIt Health accelerator in 2013, has three full-time employees and has raised $110,000 from the Wharton Venture Initiation Program and Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

As China prepares to squeeze in 350 million new urban residents over the new decade, the government will pave 5 billion square meters of new roads and build hundreds of new cities and towns. And as available land space gets smaller and smaller--especially near the bigger metropolitan regions where people really want to live--China may also start building cities on water.

First up: A new floating city designed by AT Design Office and the Chinese construction firm CCCC, slated to begin development on a pilot scale next year.

Like other high-tech entrepreneurs and would-be Mark Zuckerbergs, we were tempted by the siren call of Silicon Valley, but chose Cleveland -- to launch BoxCast, our live HD video-streaming company.

Why Cleveland? The primary challenge for us - and many startups - is having enough money to pay the bills that seem to drop faster than Justin Masterson's sinker. Our investors' cash just goes so much further in Cleveland compared to more fashionable locales. Office space, housing and employee costs are much more reasonable here.

Image: Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have won a $2.3 million grant to study the causes of child abuse and neglect in Cleveland neighborhoods. The four-year study, funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, will begin in May. (Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain Dealer)

Last month, we proudly launched our new brand and with it, a new and refined program offering. Venn Innovation Inc. is focused on businesses in early stages of growth, and companies working to strengthen and diversify their markets, or scaling operations to the next level. Venn will promote and support the early stage of business development through career preparation of our youth and developing young entrepreneurs. Through an extensive network of regional, national and international partners, Venn will provide members with access to strategic connections and collaborations needed to empower innovation and support their growth.

Venn is your connection to the tech community, a navigator for the innovation ecosystem, and an advocate for your interests.

The Intelligent Community Forum will hold its annual Summit this week in New York City and will name the 2014 Intelligent Community of Year. The three-day event is an international gathering of mayors, chief administrative officers, chief information officers and economic development officers from cities, states and regions around the world that are designated as Intelligent Communities by the Intelligent Community Forum.

Main Speakers at the Summit include:

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind, Ltd, will speak at the Awards Dinner on the evening of Thursday, June 5 and accept the 2014 Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year Award.

Ryan Holladay, TED Talks Alumnus and BLUEBRAIN Partner, will deliver the annual Revolutionary Community address during the opening of the Plenary on Thursday, June 5.

Virtually the only startups that get serious press are the ones that raise large rounds. As entertaining as it is to follow the rock-star fundraisers, what about the founders who bootstrap their way to success?

This article is not a dig on people who raise money for their venture; it is also not meant to say that bootstrapping is definitely better than raising capital. Instead, these are four arguments for why not taking on early investors could also be a smart path to take.

I am sitting in my office on the second floor of MaRS Centre and watch people coming and going. If I get out of this room and walk downstairs, like I do a few times a day, I will surely experience random collisions with fellow entrepreneurs, investors, advisors and frequent visitors whom I may know from previous lives. These random collisions create conversations that lead to ideas and potential opportunities. For me, this is the single most important benefit, among many others, to spend time here at MaRS, the largest innovation cluster in Canada. I have been a resident here for about six months and these happy collisions almost always bring me some kind of call-to-action.

The University of Pennsylvania announced the launch of its new Penn Center for Innovation Monday. It’s a reformulation of the university’s approach to engaging new ideas with the commercial and industrial sector. There are four main divisions of the just-announced initiative. There will be traditional technology transfer, corporate contracts, new venture creation and corporate alliance building, said John Swartley, the center’s head, who is also Penn’s associate vice provost for research.

Image: darren baker With the new Penn Center for Innovation, University of Pennsylvania is reforming its approach to engaging research with the commercial sector.

Given the fact that UT System drives $2.5 billion in R&D expenditures (including federal, state, and private research grants and contracts); receives a U.S. patent every two days; signs a commercialization agreement every three days; and starts a new company every nine days - it plans to advance its discovery enterprise by improving the return on investment powered by university innovation. UT System Innovation Framework 2014 is expected to advance research collaboration and commercialization, including campus research and technology transfer programs.

Raising big piles of venture capital doesn’t always guarantee success. In fact, it often puts more pressure on entrepreneurs to produce eye-popping returns for their investors. A much more desirable path is to raise a small amount of capital or no capital at all — and then produce a huge return. That keeps more of the ownership (and control) in the hands of the founding team. Here’s a look at 25 of the most capital-efficient companies over the past five years.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone’s skills in using a foreign language as my greatest challenge in getting out of college was the requirement to learn one. I did OK when we talked about French, Spanish or German culture and history—but those discussions were in English. The problem began when the instructor insisted that we try to talk in the other language. My brain immediately went numb. I used to sit in the very back of the class sweating bullets that the clock would finally tick down before the professor could call on me.

Increasing countries’ ability to adopt and adapt existing technologies is critical; strong innovative capacity is far more important than what particular combination of goods countries produce.

To spur innovation, investments in R&D are insufficient—they must be matched by a private sector that has the capacity and demand for technological upgrading

Hence, our conception of the National Innovation System and of innovation promotion policies must go beyond a narrow focus on universities or R&D and cover access to finance, managerial capacity, and a business environment that encourages risk taking.

Our society is at a crossroads. Within the next two decades 20% of the U.S. population will be over 65. This causes great debate when it comes to aging and driving. Is there ever a point where someone is too old to drive? Before you answer, consider how giving up the car keys means giving away freedom.

Think back to the last time your car was in the repair shop. Chances are you felt left out, isolated, and perhaps guilty for asking friends, family, and loved ones to change their schedules to help you get around. If you were one of the lucky ones, your car was fixed the same day, but, for senior's giving up car keys, the loss of freedom is permanent.

Although OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 ran the show at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company’s latest attempts to one-up Google and its new efforts in health are equally intriguing. Instead of sitting through a two-hour keynote, kick back for two minutes and watch the highlights:

Coding is a big deal right now. Worldwide, 36 million kids have taken part in “Hour of code” activities, helping them become active, rather than passive users of technology and starting learning that might one day help secure a job in our increasingly tech-driven world.

Even if your kids don’t go on to code for living, a basic understanding of programming concepts improves problem-solving and thinking skills which are both transferable and empowering. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says that: “Learning to write programs stretches your mind and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.“

In a recent interview, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, stated that the major hurdle for the Internet of Everything is the underlying architecture or it will not happen, as too much effort will have to be spent on systems integration. As with most technical hurdles, this will likely be addressed, sooner or later.

Many people are just figuring out Web 1.0, mastering their web browsers, email and the like. Others are getting into Web 2.0, using social media to connect to people and join communities of practice.

In the most-watched TED talk of all time—viewed, as I write this, more than 26 million times—Sir Ken Robinson says the following:

There’s a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the corpus callosum, and it’s thicker in women. … I think this is probably why women are better at multitasking. Because you are, aren’t you? There’s a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life.

He goes on to mention how his wife can cook dinner while doing a million other things. This is the go-to example when people talk or write about gender and multitasking.

Every startup with any traction quickly reaches a point where they need to hire employees to grow the business. Unfortunately, this always happens when pressures are the highest, and business processes are ill-defined. At this point you need superstars and versatile future executives, yet your in-house hiring processes and focus are at their weakest.

The result is a host of hiring mistakes that sink many young companies, or take years to fix. The solution is to never forget that hiring is a top priority task for the CEO, which should never be delegated, and which often has to supersede the urgent crises of the day.

One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don’t scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don’t. You build something, make it available, and if you’ve made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don’t, in which case the market must not exist.

Most of us hate preparing presentations. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 74% of adults suffer from speech anxiety.

Dan Roam, author of Show and Tell and The Back of the Napkin says there’s a good reason many of us fear public speaking. It’s because words aren’t the best way to express ideas and says the solution is to talk less and draw more. By using visuals, we can not only make presentations more powerful but transform ourselves into better public speakers.

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

David Deeble opened his suitcase and realized that his machete was missing. So was the plunger, the stuffed rabbit and the juggling pins — not to mention his clothes.

A comedic juggler for a cruise line, Mr. Deeble discovered six hours before the ship’s departure from Singapore that he had grabbed the wrong black wheeled bag on his way out of the airport.

Image: After an airport luggage mixup, Ric Fleisher, an entrepreneur, bought a bright blue bag. Some companies are developing digital tags for luggage that may help eliminate mixups. Credit Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

Editor's Note: In today's tech startup culture, it's widely understood that it's smarter to build a "minimum viable product" or MVP and get it to market quickly than to labor behind closed doors for years on an elaborate and feature-rich product that, in the end, nobody might really want.

But what if the MVP turns out to be too minimal? In the delightful two-minute video below, startup guru and Xconomist Steve Blank shares some insights about the true purpose of an MVP.

People believe that weather conditions influence their everyday work life, but to date, little is known about how weather affects individual productivity. Most people believe that bad weather conditions reduce productivity. In this research, we predict and find just the opposite. Drawing on cognitive psychology research, we propose that bad weather increases individual productivity by eliminating potential cognitive distractions resulting from good weather. When the weather is bad, individuals may focus more on their work rather than thinking about activities they could engage in outside of work. We tested our hypotheses using both field and lab data. First, we use field data on employees’ productivity from a mid-size bank in Japan, which we then match with daily weather data to investigate the effect of bad weather conditions (in terms of precipitation, visibility, and temperature) on productivity. Second, we use a laboratory experiment to examine the psychological mechanism explaining the relationship between bad weather and increased productivity. Our findings support our proposed model and suggest that worker productivity is higher on bad rather than good weather days. We discuss the implications of our findings for workers and managers.

One thing I've noticed during the past 25 years of delivering innovation-sparking services to a wide range of forward thinking organizations: People in business have a tendency to get overly complicated -- equating complexity with value -- as if the harder it is to understand something, the more meaningful that something must be. (Like the image below). Not true. When it comes right down to it, things are a lot simpler than we think.

Most aspiring entrepreneurs are convinced that the strength of their initial idea somehow defines them as a leader, as well as the success potential of their derivative business. In my experience, it's a lot more complicated than that. It takes leadership ability, as well as a good idea, to make a successful entrepreneur, and great leaders evolve from key leadership decisions along the way.

Google's YouTube is said to be finalizing a $1 billion acquisition of Twitch, making the San Francisco-based video game streaming service another start-up success story. But just as when Facebook purchased WhatsApp earlier for $16 billion, there will be both celebration and hand-wringing.

It’s not just your phone and your watch that are smart anymore. These days, many more devices than just your computer are connected to the Internet. As we know, scads of other devices, software and many other tools are now connected and exchanging data – creating this Internet of Things. This exchange includes important things like downloads and status updates needed to make our devices more effective and useful than ever.

Since its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has moved decisively to be among the top 50 economies in terms of the ease of doing business and overall economic freedom. On May 23, I joined President Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Prime Minister Dato Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia and Muhammad Yunus, professor of economics, founder of the Grameen Bank and laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 in Astana for a discussion about future prospects in Kazakhstan for entrepreneurs.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by Innovation America via its newsletters (InnovationDAILY), but not written or endorsed in any way by Richard Bendis or Innovation America unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.